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As magazines and newspapers hunt for the new thing they need to be to thrive in the Internet era, some find that part of the answer lies in the old thing they used to be. Publications are rediscovering their archives, like a person learning that a hand-me-down coffee table is a valuable antique. For magazines and newspapers with long histories, especially, old material can be reborn on the Web as an inexpensive way to attract readers, advertisers and money.

How many more years will we have to watch foreign correspondents parachute into a region and pretend they know what's going on? How many more reports coming out of the Middle East from hotel rooftops will be delivered by people who do not speak Arabic, or know what "the Green zone" in Iraq was called before coalition forces arrived?

But while Google is an unusual company in many ways, when you boil down its business strategy, you find that it's not quite as mysterious as it seems. The way Google makes money is straightforward: It brokers and publishes advertisements through digital media.

Google is motivated by something much larger than its congenital hatred of Microsoft. It knows that its future, both as a business and as an idea (and Google's always been both), hinges on the continued rapid expansion of the usefulness of the Internet, which in turn hinges on the continued rapid expansion of the capabilities of web apps, which in turn hinges on rapid improvements in the workings of web browsers.

Journalists are being tarnished by the activities of professional privacy invaders - Brian Cathcart dissects News of the World phone hacking scandal, plus examines the case of public interest v intrusion